Billy Graham

Shakespeare

“I’ll go to see Shakespeare plays, even in a different language. I don’t care; I just like it.”

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William Gottlieb/Getty Images

Johnny Mercer

“I love all of his stuff. “Jeepers Creepers.” “Lazy Bones.” “Blues in the Night.” If he was around now, I’d give him some of my instrumental tapes. See what he could do with them. But they might be beneath him.”

10 of 14

George Stroud/Getty Images

Pablo Picasso

“I might trade places with Picasso if I could, creatively speaking. I’d like to think I was the boss of my creative process, too, and I could just do anything I wanted whenever I wanted and it would all be on a grand scale. But of course, that’s not true.”

11 of 14

Getty Images

The American Songbook (collage of George Gershwin/Duke Ellington/Cole Porter)

“These songs were written by people who went out of fashion years ago. I’m probably someone who helped put them out of fashion. But what they did is a lost art form. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore either. But it can’t be wrong to try.”

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Istock

Bob Dylan: His True Calling

“If I had to do it all over again, I’d be a schoolteacher — probably teach Roman history or theology.”

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